


Honesty and Pain

by BrynTWedge



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Anxiety, Depression, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Honesty, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Looking For Help, Retrospective, Suicidal Thoughts, Therapy, Young Mycroft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 02:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15764433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrynTWedge/pseuds/BrynTWedge
Summary: Mycroft is in his youth, and still in a dark place - but he wants to get out of it. First he has to be honest when he's asking for help.This are his thoughts when he's sitting trying to work out exactly how to go about doing that.





	Honesty and Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone. This one is a really personal piece for me. I've tried to write things out in fanfiction form to not sound so detached from them, so I'm writing through Mycroft here. I still feel like I've left it as more describing than experiencing compared to other works, but I've probably done a better job of being unguarded than in person. 
> 
> I'd love to hear comments, but please be gentle.

Mycroft wrenched his hands together. His knuckles were white from the pressure he was gripping them with.   
_I have to do this._

He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to admit he needed to at all. But there wasn’t any running from this. Not anymore. It terrified him, and he honestly wasn’t sure how he could go about it, but he had to try. 

Why? Because he wanted to live. And, if things continued this way, that wasn’t going to happen with any certainty. Besides, he wanted to live _better_ than the stagnant existing he’d been doing. Or, at least what felt like it. 

He drew a haggard breath and forcefully exhaled through his nose.   
_Slow. Don’t panic. You’re in control, Mycroft._

There was still the question of exactly what he was going to tell her. How was it going to be different from all the other times? He’d skirted around the issue, or spoken about it with a cool detachment. Nothing that really indicated the anguish and turmoil he experienced. It was self-preservation in part, to distance himself from the feelings when having to talk about them. 

It was another part, the larger one, his parents’ teachings. Always terrified to talk about himself, to be honest, to be seen as anything but in control. He never, and still isn’t, allowed to be seen as suffering. He couldn’t show weakness. He’d had to put up that mask from a very young age and wear it constantly. He wasn’t punished if he was presenting as fine. Of course, he wasn’t given much attention at all… there wasn’t much in the way of support when it came to his rearing. Be perfect all the time, or you’ll be punished. It’s left him feeling more and more a failure every day. 

_No, I can’t focus on the past. That’s been and gone. Things are different now, and now is what I’m here to talk about. I am a failure, though. I can’t even function like a normal adult. I’ve had more practice at being one than most, so I don’t know why I can’t manage._

Mycroft shook his head to clear his mind. His heart still raced and his body screamed at him for more air, but he refused it. He knew it was just anxiety, and if he relinquished that control over himself then he’d devolve into a panic attack of some degree. He snorted at himself.   
_I bet everyone else doesn’t have to hold themselves to that standard. They’d just have the damned panic attack._

Pain washed over him at the thought. _Yet I’m the one that makes me hold myself to that standard. Fear of not being in control. I wish I wasn’t so damned afraid._ He groaned and bent forward in the seat, pressing his forehead to his clasped hands. _I wish I wasn’t like this._

He let his mind wander over the past year. He clenched his eyes together to ensure that the threatening tears didn’t spill. He’d been through so much, worked so hard, and now… here he was. Losing a battle with himself _after_ the struggle against the world was over. 

_I want it to stop. I want to stop fighting this. I don’t want it over, I just want not to have to struggle.  
_ Mycroft took some steadying breaths. He felt like his chest cavity had been hollowed out. Ice swirled in his gut. He couldn’t shake the dread and despair that plagued him constantly.

_What is there to do, though? Even if I explain how terrible I feel all the time, even if I am brutally honest at how scared of myself I am, how repulsed at the dark truths of my soul… what is there to do? Nothing has come of trying at all thus far. And yet… there was always somewhere to go. Something left to try, to do, to change. And now? Now there’s not._

He’d finished university. His peers had gone off onto respectable jobs, and he’d been left behind. He’d struggled too much with himself to face the prospect of pursuing his career. Now there was a big gap, a huge hurdle, should he wish to try again. He wasn’t sure he was up for that challenge. Sherlock didn’t need him anymore. Mycroft had moved out for university, and really that was when he’d stopped being needed by his little brother. Coming back again served only to prove that. He’d felt more segregated and unwanted upon his unceremonious return to the family home than when he’d been living two hundred kilometres away. 

_My failure, that is. Another part of it. Failure to escape. Failure to have a relationship_. His throat clenched uncomfortably at the thought of his former partner. They’d been engaged. It was only in the last year of their relationship did Mycroft realise how abusive his partner had gotten, and only the final incident causing him to stand up for himself. Still, he’d been abandoned even after saying he’d stay and try work it out when honestly, he shouldn’t have. He just didn’t have any measure of self-esteem to do otherwise. Even though he was grateful now, looking back, that it was over and he wasn’t subject to that anymore… he was still plagued with loneliness and a crushing pain of emptiness when he felt the yearning for companionship. All of it; not just sex, but being held, being cared for, being kissed, touched, considered. Mycroft bit his lip when he realised he never had much of that even when he’d been in the damned relationship. 

_It’d given me a purpose, though. Even if that purpose was to be the sole provider, the sole supporter… I still had something ahead. Now I have nothing. There’s nothing in the future. People say ‘you could do anything’, but don’t they know how utterly exhausting that is? How overwhelming? Not only do I have to decide what to do, I have to motivate myself to do it at the exclusion of all other things, and then somehow succeed under the premise of having the ability to do many things makes one automatically skilled at one._

Mycroft envied his brother, sometimes. To have that single drive in life. To know what he wanted, and to want to get out and do it. Mycroft just wanted to lay on the floor, or more often his bed, and wait. Nothing in particular was coming, but he felt like he was just waiting. 

_Focus, Mycroft. She’ll call me any minute, and I have to have some kind of plan._   
He thought over some of the things that had happened as of late that made him decide he needed to try this… to try not minimise the situation. 

Standing in the bathroom, noticing a spot on his stomach and just grabbing a box cutter and cutting into it. Feeling no pain as the blood ran out, not even registering that he was harming himself. The ingrown hair removed, he’d just rinsed the blood off the blade and continued about his business. He was constantly overrun with desires to harm himself: cutting, overdosing, the urge to be injured significantly worse than he could bring himself to do to his body. He never knew why. It’d been something he’d felt for a decade. He hated himself, sure, but it wasn’t really related. It was just… a deep desire. He reasoned it was to reflect the pain he felt inside, or to have something physical to suffer from that would explain his emotions. But this last experience was different… it was detached, like it didn’t register that he was even doing it. No preparation, no cleaning up, no pain. That wasn’t normal even in the realms of self harm. 

Having a panic attack and the desperate need to be up on the tower. The observation platform on the radio tower along his walking route, that was. It was near midnight but he went. The pounding of his heart didn’t stop until he was up there in the cold, drizzly wind, looking down over the edge. He thought to himself that he _could,_ but he was choosing not to. It was fine, he’d told himself. He wasn’t there to end it. But he _could_. Afterwards, it had scared him how easily he’d gone up there, and how badly his body had demanded it. 

What came next from here was what scared him. When would ‘it’s fine, I won’t do anything’ turn into ‘it’s just a little bit’, and then ‘it doesn’t matter in the end’? He’d been there before. He’d attempted before. Both times he’d felt the same hopelessness and misery as he felt right now.   
_It never took much to go from refusal to action_. _When things stopped mattering, it was very easy to fall down_. 

Mycroft whimpered. _I can’t do this. I can’t walk in there and say that I need to be taken more seriously. I can’t, I can’t. There’s nothing to be done._ He’d talked of feeling more depressed now that he’d done all he could to change things… everyone told him that he should be feeling better, because things were better now (he’d changed his name, he’d escaped his family, he wasn’t in an abusive relationship, he’d gotten his degree, he was living on his own) but it left him feeling more lost than ever. There wasn’t anything left to escape from, and that’s all he’d done for his life. Focus on escaping, trying to make things better… always with that belief that he’d feel better once he made it. And yet, here he was, and he still felt the same depression clawing into his heart and the same anxiety wrapping around his throat. And there was _nothing left_ _to do_.

Despite knowing this, he was still falling down further. Niggling in the back of his mind was that sinister voice that told him he’d tried everything now, and it wasn’t better, so he could die having given it his all. He didn’t _want_ that, but it scared him how much he believed that voice. 

He wanted to listen to the voices of his distant friends: that he was actually loveable, and would find a man to love and be loved in return one day. That he could do things well. That it would get better. _The last point doesn’t seem to happen, though. I tried and failed and it’s all just the same. I’m twenty-six now. I don’t know if I want to spend my whole life like this. If it’s like this then why bother trying and just get it over with?_

He bit his knuckle. _No, don’t think that. Fuck I’m so conflicted all the time. I can’t keep up this façade of control._ He trembled. _I don’t want to live terrified of myself, or of my family’s reaction to my state of being._ That was a big thing. Always refusing to seek more intense help in fear of his family finding out. Even now, living away from them, they loomed over him. He wasn’t sure the fear of his mother would ever leave, or the demands of his father. 

What is there to do, when nothing can be done? _I’m so … tired. Tired of trying to get somewhere. And that’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Sitting out of the therapist’s office about to beg for help because I don’t know what else to do and can’t keep up the illusion of keeping it together. I’m not on the outside looking in, I’m trapped inside. Some days I feel like I could manage fine, and others I’m left questioning if it’s worth trying to see another._

He still worried about how he could get that across, though. He couldn’t fall to his knees and weep. If he was honest with himself, and now was the time to be, he was afraid that he’d take this step and still nothing would change. They’d talk, and he’d be sent on his way back to the same. Mycroft stifled another whimper. There were only two options: be sent back to face everything alone still, or not be sent back. If he wasn’t, he still had to deal with his responsibilities and the fallout of disappearing which his mother would NOT approve of. It’d only be harder to try and make it back to any semblance of the ‘normal’ he currently had… and he would be sent back to it all alone again in a week or maybe two. 

_Ok Mycroft, time for some honest truths. They’re contradictory, they prove I’m terrible, but I think I have to voice them.  
_ _I feel so unstable and I hate it. I wish I didn’t have anyone that cared about me, so that I could die and not affect anyone. I wish I was thinner so that I could have a chance of finding someone to care and love me. I wish I had a career that was important. I need to feel like I’m important in others’ eyes. I have found that I like being cared about and want to have more of that. I find I want to tell people about the challenges I am feeling to get that attention. I want to be seriously injured, and have someone care about it. I have always just done what I can, and not what I enjoy. I’ve done what I can do well, and not done the things I can’t do well. I want to enjoy doing something. I have it better than a lot of people and yet I feel terrible. I have given up trying to make myself get out of bed before noon. I don’t like that I don’t enjoy sex like I used to, but keep trying to find that pleasure and wish I had someone to share that with. I am a coward. I am too sensitive. I do not want to die, but I do want to try to see that someone would be there._

The last one stung him. He never let himself get there, to that point where he’d seek someone to talk him down as it were, but he couldn’t deny feeling the desire to have that proof that he mattered enough to someone that they’d try to stop him. _‘I wouldn’t save you’_ rang in his head. His former partner’s words. It was like a knife to his heart, but one he accepted without argument. He felt he deserved it, to want to put someone he cared about through that. 

_I have to get better before I have a hope of finding someone to share a life with, or even enjoy the company of, or pursue a career. How can I hope to achieve those when I can’t get win the battle to get better first? I need a turning point in my life._

“Mycroft?”  
Mycroft looked up from the floor. He tried to still his hands.   
“Come in.”

He still didn’t know what to say.   
_At least I’m trying, though, right? Still trying to fight has to count for something._


End file.
